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Jamesgangcc's avatar
Jamesgangcc
Collaborator | Level 9
4 years ago

How Do I stop Dropbox from syncing the external drives

I'm in my fifth day of a sync after having to do a clean install of a new OS on my mac. 206000 files to go according to the download. What happens is Dropbox sees a file with an * or ! and stops and ...
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  • Jamesgangcc's avatar
    Jamesgangcc
    4 years ago

    Thanks, Hanna. I read another comment on another thread where the person said "you can delete the external" and I went into my Dropbox and lo and behold. There it was. I disconnected it first, to be on the safe side, then deleted from Dropbox. Of course I got the message "Dropbox can't continue to backup (sync) without the External." Good. 🙂 And that worked. It also made the issue that was causing the sync to stop on and off for five days to finalize. I then checked the box to just save local (and got the cryptic message "if you move this file you won't be able to access on any device" which I finally figured out that doesn't mean my computer, it means phones, pads, etc. So after five days all is finally back to where I can actually move a file into a folder on my computer without being asked if I'm sure I want to put a file in a folder on my computer. So, I'm done for now. The folders I want in Dropbox are there. The folders that I don't want there, aren't. 

Hannah's avatar
Hannah
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
Hey Jamesgangcc, thanks for posting on our Community today!

If you enabled the backup feature for your external drives, but don't need it, you should be able to delete the backup folders from your Dropbox folder.

See more about this here. 

However, can you please send me a screenshot of the message you saw, when you unplugged the external drives?

Thanks!
Jamesgangcc's avatar
Jamesgangcc
Collaborator | Level 9
4 years ago

PS There's no way to send you a screen capture of the message because it vanishes immediately unless you know to do that by reading into the future. 

  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    4 years ago
    Thanks for the update, James and I'm happy to see that all is well. 

    If you need anything else, make sure to give us a shout.

    Have a great weekend!

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